Skiing in Control - Free thoughts and suggestions from one of Europe's top coaches.

Tag Archives: Mind

Sports psychology plays a big part in top level sports nowadays. As anyone will know who has been on my skiing courses, visited the bobski.com blog, or read my book here

It is not an arcane science that is only available to elite performers, we can all use it.

The picture above is of Irish Rugby star Johnny Sexton making the drop-kick during overtime minutes in the Ireland-vs-France match yesterday. The significance for out skiing, you ask ?

The pressure on him was enormous; the time available almost non-existent; his responsibility to the rest of his team who had worked incredibly hard to set-up this half-opportunity equally burdensome.

Using imagery, from sports psychology, to improve your chances.

Interviewed afterwards, Sexton said seconds before he took the kick – a 42 yarder ! – he remembered and evisioned a previous game, years before, with almost the same characterisitics, when he took a similar kick that had succeeded !

He implied that his imagery had helped him succeed with this one. I believe him.

Whatever level of skiing ability you currently possess, you can use imagery and mental control techniques to help you. Like everything to do with skill, whether skiing or not, you need practice at mental techniques. But they are just as available to you as they are to elite performers.

Learn about skiing mental techniques and you will improve your skiing more than you may think.

Imagery works. I cover a lot of it in other blog posts, some of my “white papers” – if you want some just write to me at bobski@bobski.com and of course I explain much more fully the things that you can do, in my book: the link above should take you to it or just Google Ski In Control: How to ski ANY piste, anywhere, in full control.

This morning my long suffering wife made some smarty-pants comment about my memory being somewhat suspect. Dammit she’s right.

The ensuing conversation (not a heated debate) raised an interesting issue related to skiing, and how to ski in control. Why is it, we wondered, that memorising things has never been that easy even when we were young? And yet once we know how to do something, there is no need to memorise it. Once you know something, memory is not required. This can lead to difficulties – if you have practiced “doing turns” sufficiently often for example you will have trapped yourself into a very limited kind of skiing from which escape and further development will be jolly difficult, because “doing turns” is not an appropriate concept. Continue reading →

“… one ring to bind them,
in the land of More Doors,
Where the shadows lie”.
J.R.R.Tolkien.

It’s something of a misquotation, I accept. I’ve just spent a couple of days making doors for what may yet, if the planners can be persuaded to avert their gaze, or they suffer from 100% cuts, become an abode in the stone barn down the yard.

There is nothing wrong with my joinery that can’t be fixed with a couple of giant sanding machines, loads of patience and a forty gallon drum of epoxy! I am an amateur.

While sawing, morticing, routing, and so on, I mused on matters psychological because I found many parallels with the kinds of difficulties many of my skiing pupils encounter when developing their skill.

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